So in a desperate bid to catch up on my blogs I am covering the last two weeks of my Thursday evening classes at RADA in one brief blog. Ok, I admit it, its not solely for that reason. This last week just gone I was dreadful, I just wasn't focused, my mind was somewhere else. Where? Who knows! I sure as hell didn't. Either way it doesn't really give me all that much to write about, so consolidating everything into one blog makes so much more sense!
In the first of these two weeks we touched on method acting, with similar approaches to those used for my classes at Saddlers Wells. It was interesting to have this renowned style of actors training taught to us in a different way. You have to remember this script is based in the 1900's, so its much harder to find you're character compared to Harper Regan (the play I study in my other classes) which is set in the present day. Jenn asked us to think of what people wore in those days, a mans attitude to a woman, posture and class among other things. Obviously all we had to base our ideas on were images and footage we had seen from the times. Its difficult to get a completely accurate representation of a character of that era as none of us are Russian for starters and more to the point, none of us are in excess of 100 years old. I felt this class really built on my knowledge of method acting and the timing of this class coincided with my Saddlers Wells classes well.
With regards to the week just passed we each studied a monologue and discovered ways of characterising our role. There are two ways... well, there are many ways but they all fall into these two sub-groups. You can either study a script in depth, where you look at you're character's attitude to themselves and others as well as studying the major changes which happen within that role. Alternatively you can phsicalise that role... I have to be honest whilst the script study made a lot of sense I couldn't see how associating your character to an animal and those animal's mannerisms really helped to build a character all that much. I guess looking back to the workshop it worked a little, but I felt I got a greater understanding of Constantine (my character) by analysing the script in depth. I guess some techniques work better than others for actors, hence why we were shown both approaches.
Whilst generally I was not focused for the second class, I feel my performance of the monologue went relatively well. Sure I could have given it a bit more, but honestly, I feel there were maybe only two or three others better than mine from all of the performances. That's not bad in quite a large class in a week where I was generally rubbish!!!
Well there we have it another rather uninteresting update. I was meant to be going to the theatre last night to see "Into The Woods", but circumstances were stacked up against me... so i missed out! Oh well at least I get to see Billy Elliot in a fortnights time!
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